she was referring to some unpleasant experience of her own. “Not, of course, that that stops the gossip-mills from churning round.”
“I gather the Roxbys have been allowed to move back into Pelling House,” said Carole tentatively.
Debbie seemed to have no curiosity about her source of information. “Yes, they have.”
“Mightn’t that suggest that the police have finished their investigations there?”
“Who knows? They haven’t said anything about it to me.”
“But they have spoken to you again?”
“Oh yes. They wanted Francis’s address. He’s in Florida. With Jonelle.” She tried to say the name with no intonation, but failed. “Seems in the future he’ll be spending a lot of time out in Florida.”
“Ah. The police didn’t say why they wanted to talk to him?”
“Presumably the same reason they wanted to talk to me. Check dates, when we bought Pelling House and so on.”
“And how often Francis used to go down to the cellar there?”
“Yes,” said Debbie Carlton shortly.
“You implied yesterday that Francis went down there more often than you did…”
“Well, obviously, men spend more time doing DIY and…He kept some tools down there…He – ” She was flustered. “But I’m sure he didn’t know about the torso.”
“You can’t be positive about that.”
“No, I can’t be positive, but…Look, I know we ended on bad terms, but I was with Francis for more than five years. I was in love with him, and I can still recognize the good qualities in his character. OK, he wasn’t that reliable and he was a bit tight-fisted and, yes, I know he had other affairs before Jonelle…but there is no way my husband – my ex-husband – is a murderer!”
Funny, thought Carole, I didn’t mention the word ‘murder’. At the end of their conversation, she put the phone down with some satisfaction. She knew what she had just heard: the sound of a woman protesting too much. Debbie Carlton was suspicious that her ex-husband might have some connection with the torso.
? The Torso in the Town ?
Eleven
Jude got back late on the Friday night. It had been an emotionally draining trip and she slept in on the Saturday morning. When she got up, the garage door of High Tor was hooked open, and there was no sign of the immaculate Renault. Carole was probably off doing a big Sainsbury’s shop.
Jude knew she should really do the same. She was out of virtually everything. Not even enough in the freezer to make herself lunch. For Carole, that would have been a definite argument to go shopping. For Jude, it was an argument to go and have lunch at the Crown and Anchor.
The bar looked welcoming and relaxed, but even scruffier than before. The same could be said for its owner. Ted Crisp’s hair and beard were shaggier, and it was a few days since their last encounter with shampoo. His uniform T-shirt and tracksuit trousers also looked as though they had been on for a while. Perhaps, Jude thought, like Carole, he was reacting to the end of their relationship by becoming more intensely himself. She had become more uptight than ever, he more sloppy. As if to say: This is what I’m really like. You’d hate me if you saw me now. It could never have worked.
Jude hadn’t had any breakfast and was hungry, so arrived at the pub soon after twelve. There were a coupleof weekending families squabbling over crisps and Coke at the open-air tables, but she was the only customer inside the bar. Ted Crisp looked up lugubriously, took her in slowly, and said, “Hello, stranger.”
“Yes, sorry I haven’t been in much recently. I’ve had to – ”
“No need to apologize. Still a large white wine, is it?”
“Please. And are you taking food orders yet?”
“Sure. Recommend the Fisherman’s Pie today. Got a bit of everything in it, that has, and all fresh from the quay. Cheesy potato on top, and it’s served with chips the size of logs. Get outside of that and you won’t hurt.”
“Your silver-tongued sales talk has persuaded me. I’ll go for it. God, I’m starving.”
Ted called the order through to an unseen presence in the kitchen, then turned back to her. “What you been up to, then?”
When asked direct questions, Jude always answered. Carole was the only one whose gentility made her think she’d gone too far into their friendship to start asking.
“I’ve been with a friend who’s just lost her husband. Very cut-up, needless to say. I’ve been hand-holding to get her through the funeral.”
“Ah. I see. There you are.” Ted pushed across her glass of wine. There was a silence. The ghost of Carole seemed to hover between them, and could only be exorcized by the mention of her name.
Ted took a clumsy run at it. “Thought I might have lost your custom too.”
“Hm?”
“You know, when I put your friend’s back up. Thought I might get the old sisterly solidarity reaction.”
Jude shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “No I wouldn’t behave like that. And you haven’t exactly put Carole’s back up. She just feels embarrassed, that’s all. Oh come on, Ted, it’s not as if you treated her badly.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No. It just didn’t work out between you, that’s all. You were looking for different things.”
“You can say that again.” Ted Crisp wearily ran a hand through the foliage of his beard. “Carole…” There, he’d managed to say it. “Carole kept wanting to define everything. Where were we going? What was the nature of our relationship?” He let out a defeated sigh. “Why is it that men think in terms of enjoying things right now and are never in any hurry to see what happens next, whereas women are always thinking in terms of bloody
“That’s been one of the great gender issues since time began,” said Jude.
“Yes, in the bloody garden of Eden I bet Adam was just thinking ‘This is all very nice’, while Eve was working out how many fig-leaves it’d take to make the curtains. Well, I’m afraid, in terms of what me and Carole were thinking, we could have been on two different planets.”
Jude grinned. “Might be a good idea for a book in that.” She went on, “You have to remember, of course, Ted, that I don’t think Carole’s ever before been in a casual relationship.”
“You’re right. Seems like the marriage was about it for her. Funny, ‘cause she’s a bloody attractive woman.”
“I’m not sure that she thinks that.”
“No. The husband – bloody David – when he left her, he drained away any little bit of confidence she might have had. Really knocked her sideways, that. She never opened up to me much, you know, like emotionally, butshe said something once that indicated just how much he’d hurt her.”
“Anyway, I’m sure soon you and Carole’ll be able to…you know…see each other without any pressure or recrimination.”
“Just be friends’?” He grimaced cynically. “Yeah. Sounds simple. Trouble is, it never turns out like that, does it?” Having performed the ceremony of exorcism, he now wanted to put it behind him. “Anyway, what you been up to? Apart from comforting the bereaved?”
“Been having some thoughts about that business up in Fedborough…”
“‘The Torso in the Town’. Yeah, lot of the old codgers in here been maundering on about that. Heard every kind of theory about who the body might’ve been – names ranging from Eva Braun, who somehow survived the bunker in Berlin, to Lord Lucan after a sex change. One old geezer even reckoned she was a serial killer…who got into a feud with another serial killer. Mind you, I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?” asked Jude, stepping straight into the trap he had prepared for her.
“Because I know she was totally ‘armless.”
She groaned. “God, I do set them up for you, don’t I, Ted?”
“Sorry. Old habits die hard. When you done the standup circuit as long as I did, you’re always looking for the comic angle.”
